" "^ - )"F n ".;". . .... . '. .... ," ". .... .. .... ":. ;.;;;;.;.; - ::. ," ...... ".';.; ';:: -'. .:; - . ....::--...::. :.:::;.. .-..;. ;.;.:. ',' .... ';'::';"';';'. ,". - .:. . ....... ,". . .. ".: .... ';'.': 'S" " ^ """ """^"-, . " " " " . "':"--"""""" " ""' . ' . " . """'" "" . .....,. . '. ,:'? . . .,...,. ... "." ,' , -' .-:.";'.": ' .": ... .. ... . "..': ," ' '. ,::".':\ ...,., If 90 nothing could provide more accurate positive identity than achieving a match between bone material of unknown origin and blood from a known per- son. Ivanov was eager to go to Japan, but, as always, "there was no money. The English said, 'Why should we pay for this?' The Russians said, We have no money.'" Eventually, Rostropovich arranged for Ivanov's trip. "It was the money we were going to use to dig up George," Ivanov says. "So, instead of George, we did Japan." The Japanese were not anxious to gIve up or even disturb the handkerchief: but Rostropovich had spoken to his friend the Emperor of Japan, and the Emperor had spoken to the relevant au- thorities. When Ivanov arrived, he was permitted to remove and take with him a strip of the handkerchief three inches long and less than an eighth of an inch wide. Unfortunately, back in Gill's labo- ratory in England, Ivanov ran into difficulties. "The handkerchief had been handled by too many people," he said. "Cells slough off from fingers. There was a lot of blood on the handkerchief, but who knows how much of it was Nicholas's? And there was a lot of dust and dirt. It would be impossible to say that any result you got from that hand- / , , , . . . . It '" t þ ': " ;'. . -Ln ,- .tgO -? . ...,". . ... kerchief was reliable. There were too many other possible contaminants." In July of 1993, Gill and Ivanov de- cided to announce to the world the re- sults of their ten months of work The Al- dennaston team said that, given the DNA evidence and adding it to the anthropo- logical and historical evidence provided by others, they were 98.5 per cent cer- taIn that these were the Romanovs. This percentage, Gill said, was based on the lowest interpretation of the DNA evi- dence. A more generous interpretation would increase the probability to ninety- nine per cent. Pavel Ivanov took a broader view of what had been done. 'We are very close to the last part of this mys- tery, to one of the great mysteries of the twentieth century, one of the great mys- teries of my country, of Russia," he said. In February of 1994, Peter Gill, Pa- vel Ivanov, and others published a de- scription of their work in Nature Genet- ics, one of the most authoritative journals of their profession. Their findings and article have never been challenged or even mildly criticized, in print or orally, by another DNA scientist I N April of 1993, Dr. Maples and his wife had returned to Siberia, assisted by two airline tickets provided by the >tv ' ).. . . '" >% { ' l l c:-- . ' 'II i I, ì ... . ' ' t: ' :,\ J ', J "" . 'III" It' ., , y/v'.-i . --z ^ . _ " - ..f.... '1s he guilty? Hell, yes, he's guilty. Now can we talk about something else?" American television program "Unsolved Mysteries." In Ekaterinburg, Maples photographed the skeletal remains again, more carefully than he had been able to do on his previous trip. He also removed one tooth from each of the skulls except that of Dr Botkin, which had few teeth to spare, and that of Kharitonov, which had none. From Botkin and Kharitonov, he took leg- bone fragments. The teeth, he believed, would be far more suitable for accurately identifYing the imperial family by DNA testing than the pieces of femur taken to Britain by Pavel Ivanov. Along with these teeth, Maples carried away from Ekaterinburg a decree from the Sverd- lovsk regional prosecutor authorizing him to export the bones. Curiously, no one bothered to tell Dr. Vladislav Plak- sin, the chief medical examiner of the Russian government, or Pavel Ivanov, then in his seventh month of working with Peter Gill at Aldermaston. Returning to Florida, Maples held the Russian teeth in his laboratory for six weeks, then "transferred custody" to Lowell Levine, who carried them to California and, in June, gave them to Dr. Mary-Claire King, who held two professorships at the University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley-one in epidemiol- ogy in the School of Public Health, the other in genetics in the Depart- ment of Molecular and Cell Biol- ogy. AccordIng to Maples, Dr. King "is the foremost forensic-genetics scientist in the United States and one of the most higWy regarded sci- entists in this field anywhere in the world." And her database for mak- ing mitochondrial-DNA compari- sons was far larger than that of the British Forensic Science Service. According to Maples, Dr. King's database held mitochondrial-DNA information on a thousand people; Peter Gill and Aldermaston had information on only about three hundred. William Maples met Peter Gill for the first time in June of 1993, be- fore Gill's press conference an- nouncing identification of the Ro- manov bones. Maples was in En- gland, preparing for his third visit to Ekaterinburg. From London, Ma- ples and his wife drove to Aldennas- ton, where they took Peter Gill and Pavel Ivanov to lunch. The lun-